NEDC, URCF Distributes Dignity Kits To Bauchi Students, Women
BY KHALID IDRIS DOYA, Bauchi
North-East Development Commission (NEDC) in collaboration with non-governmental organization, Ubola Rural Community Foundation (URCF) distributed dignity kits to over 450 women, girls and boys in Bauchi schools.
Speaking during the distribution exercise on Tuesday, the state coordinator of the NEDC, Mallam Ibrahim Mohammed Bashir said that the commission collaborated with URCF to make the children self-sufficient, well educated in terms of health and facilities.
According to him, the commission understood that some of the women are in need of those facilities because they don’t have them, hence the commission’s emphasis on the importance of healthcare, and comfort the individuals to sustain their livelihoods in an articulated manner.
“Giving this few doesn’t mean that it would end up there, eventually when the children and women are given these facilities, they would use it to enhance their personal hygiene thereby improve their health conditions.
Also speaking, the URCF Technical Assistant, Dr. Omede Ogu said that it has been a long vision of the foundation to be heavily involved in humanitarian activities.
He explained that the principal officers of the foundation have for the past 17 years been involved in several humanitarian activities both nationally and internationally.
Dr. Ogu noted that insurgency has been in the Northeast for the past two decades leading to displacement of people and communities, destruction of schools and health facilities, hence the foundation throwing it’s search and experience in the subregion with the observation that women and girl-child are vulnerable.
“To balance it all, we also brought in the concept of the boys because the record of the out of school children for the Northeast is also high, and so we thought balancing the intervention, while intervening for women and children, there is also need for the boys because of their vulnerability”.
Ogu explained that the kids contain dignity bags, sanitary pads for both girls and women to help in their mensural hygiene, brush to support dental hygiene, soap for general body hygiene, comb, headcream, for hair making and against communicable diseases.
The Deputy director, schools services 1 with the state ministry of education, Ladi Hamma Mohammed, who also spoke, described the intervention as an extremely welcome idea which the ministry appreciated, as it would complement what the ministry is already doing with Plan International on reproductive health and personal hygiene, among others.
Malam Ladi Hamma Mohammed therefore called on parents to take care of the kids and make sure their wards make good use of them, and not to sell the kids in the markets.
She attributed the intervention to women and children by the NEDC and civil society organizations to the hardships Nigerians are currently facing as a result of some government policies or programmes.
